Ephesians 5:3–7

Ephesians 5:3 — The Standard of Sainthood Paul opens with a sweeping moral inventory: porneia (sexual immorality), akatharsia (uncleanness or impurity), and pleonexia (covetousness or greed). These three were already linked in 4:19 as the characteristics of the Gentile world that the Ephesians have left behind. The phrase "let it not even be named among you" (mēde onomazesthō) is extraordinarily demanding — Paul is not merely prohibiting the acts themselves but the very casual mention of them, as though they were ordinary topics of conversation. This reflects the ancient understanding that speech shapes moral culture; to speak lightly of vice is already to begin accommodating it. The governing norm is "as hagiois prepei" — "as is fitting for saints." Sainthood (hagiasmos, holiness) here is not an aspiration but an identity already conferred in baptism. The moral standard flows from the ontological reality. Covetousness is notably included alongside sexual sins — Paul will make its gravity explicit in verse 5.

Ephesians 5:4 — The Corruption of the Tongue Paul adds three more vices: aischrotes (filthiness or obscenity), mōrologia (foolish talking), and eutrapelia (jesting or ribaldry). These are not merely imprudent; they are "not fitting" (anēken) — a term of social propriety turned toward the sacred. The positive counterpart is striking: instead of these corruptions, let there be eucharistia — thanksgiving. This is almost certainly a deliberate liturgical resonance. The Eucharist reshapes the tongue. Where the world fills speech with crudeness and folly, the saint fills it with gratitude. St. John Chrysostom noted that shameful jesting "introduces fornication by the door of laughter," recognizing that moral degradation often begins not in overt acts but in the lowering of speech.

Ephesians 5:5 — The Eschatological Verdict Paul introduces his climactic assertion with the emphatic touto gar iste ginōskontes — "for this you know, knowing it" — a double expression that signals he is invoking something the community should already hold as settled doctrine. The three vices of verse 3 are reprised, but now pleonexia (covetousness) is given a devastating gloss: the covetous man is an idolater (eidōlolatrēs). This identification, which Paul also makes in Colossians 3:5, is theologically electrifying. Greed displaces God from the center of the will and substitutes a created good; it is structurally identical to idol worship. None of these three — the sexually immoral, the impure, the idolater-covetous — "has an inheritance (klēronomia) in the Kingdom of Christ and God." The term klēronomia echoes the inheritance language of the Old Testament (the Promised Land as God's gift), now reapplied to the eschatological Kingdom. To persist in these sins is to forfeit one's share in the covenant inheritance.

Ephesians 5:6 — Against Moral Relativism "Let no one deceive you with empty words (kenois logois)." Paul anticipates a real danger: false teachers or permissive voices who would rationalize these sins away. "Empty words" may refer to gnostic-adjacent libertinism that separated spiritual status from moral conduct, or to pagan sophistry that normalized vice. Paul responds not with philosophical argument but with eschatological fact: the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. The present tense (erchetai) suggests both a future judgment and a present reality — the wrath is already operative in the disintegration that sin produces.

Ephesians 5:7 — Separating from Complicity "Do not become fellow partakers (symmetochoi) with them." This is not a call to social withdrawal from sinners per se, but to refusal of complicity — not sharing in the ethos, the laughter, the casual endorsement of what God has condemned. The word symmetochoi is the negative counterpart of the sharing (metochē) in the Body of Christ. The saint cannot be a sharer in both kingdoms simultaneously.

Catholic tradition brings several distinctive lenses to this passage. First, the Church's sacramental anthropology frames Paul's ethics: the demand for purity is grounded not in legalism but in the dignity of the baptized body. The Catechism teaches that "the body and soul of the human person participate together in the dignity proper to the image of God" (CCC 364) and that sexual sins "do injury to the dignity of the person" (CCC 2337). Ephesians 5:3–7 is read in light of this theology: the body of the baptized person has become a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 6:19), and sins against it are a sacrilege in the full sense.

Second, the identification of covetousness with idolatry (v. 5) is richly developed in Catholic social teaching. Pope Francis in Laudato Si' and Evangelii Gaudium repeatedly identifies the idolatry of money and consumption as a structural spiritual disorder that distorts human community — directly echoing Paul's equation. This is not mere metaphor; it names the theological root of economic injustice.

Third, St. Thomas Aquinas, commenting on Ephesians, links verse 5's exclusion from the Kingdom not to a denial of God's mercy but to a moral-ontological incompatibility: the person who makes created goods his finis ultimus has reoriented his whole life away from God. The Kingdom is not withheld as punishment alone; the soul oriented to vice is constitutively incapable of receiving it. This aligns with the Catechism's teaching on mortal sin as a fundamental "option against God" (CCC 1856).

Finally, the Council of Trent (Session 6, Decree on Justification, Canon 19) affirmed that the justified are truly bound to keep the commandments — directly countering any antinomian reading of grace that the "empty words" of v. 6 might represent in every age.

Contemporary Catholic life is saturated with the very cultural conditions Paul warns against. Digital media, streaming entertainment, and advertising normalize exactly the porneia, aischrotes, and mōrologia Paul names — not in lurid extremes alone, but in the ambient humor, imagery, and assumption that these are harmless. The Catholic today must take seriously Paul's insistence that it "not even be named" — meaning the standard is not merely avoiding grave acts but cultivating a culture of the eyes, speech, and imagination that befits a baptized person.

Concretely: What do you watch habitually? What do you laugh at? What do your group chats or social feeds contain? These are not trivial questions. Paul's warning about "empty words" (v. 6) applies pointedly to the rationalization that passes as sophistication: "It's just a show," "Everyone talks like this," "I'm not actually doing anything wrong." These are precisely the kenoi logoi — hollow arguments — that Paul says precede the wrath of God.

Positively, Paul offers eucharistia — thanksgiving — as the transformation of the tongue. Regular recourse to the Eucharist, the Liturgy of the Hours, and a daily practice of gratitude are not pious additions to a moral program; they are its source, reshaping what the heart and mouth find natural to express.